Wireless communication networks are increasingly being used for wireless communications with various types of wireless terminals. The wireless network itself may include a plurality of wireless base stations, also commonly referred to as “base stations”, “radio access nodes”, “RAN nodes”, “NodeBs”, “eNodeBs” or simply as “nodes”, that define a plurality of cells, and a core network that controls the base stations and interfaces the base stations with other wired and/or wireless networks. The nodes may be terrestrial and/or space-based. The nodes communicate with wireless terminals, also referred to as “User Equipment (UE)”, “mobile stations”, “user terminals”, “terminals” or simply as “wireless devices”, using radio resources that are allocated to the wireless network. The radio resources may be defined in terms of time (for example, in a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) system), frequency (for example, in a Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) system) and/or code (for example, in a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system) or time-frequency resource (for example a resource block, in a Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiple Access (OFDMA) system). The nodes may use licensed and/or unlicensed frequency spectrum. Radio resources may be assigned to wireless devices by the wireless network upon initial communication and may be reassigned due to, for example, movement of the wireless devices, changing bandwidth requirements, changing network traffic, etc.
In order to communicate with a node, a wireless device generally synchronizes to a node, acquires the physical-layer identity of the node, and detects the frame timing of the node, using a search procedure. Once this has been achieved, the wireless device generally has to acquire the node's System Information (SI). SI includes information that is repeatedly broadcast by a wireless network, and which generally needs to be acquired by wireless devices in order for them to be able to access, and to operate properly within the wireless network and within a specific node. The SI includes, among other things, information about the downlink and uplink cell bandwidths, detailed parameters related to random access transmission and uplink power control, etc.
The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to claims in this application and any application claiming priority from this application, and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion of this section.